Morning Metal’s “Modern Metal” Introduction

In the Spring of 2012 after countless hours, weeks, months and years of reading metal musicians biographies, YouTube interviews, album reviews and arguing with other metal heads about our mutual passion, I decided to put it all in one place.

I introduce to you all, “Modern Metal”. A collection of topics ranging from lyrical content, political involvement, musicianship, imagery, album reviews, music videos, album covers, endorsement companies and a look into where hard rock/metal is going. Every week, I will share parts of this “book” which will cover various topics on my mind.

All interviews featured in this story are real – with notes on where to find it for validation. If you have any comments that you would like to add to it, I welcome them. I am happy to share this with Ottawa Showbox, its creators and all of you.

Modern Metal: Introduction

Modern Metal. For the rest few pages, you’ll be reading about the foundations of metal, the future of our most coveted genre, instruments our favourite musicians wield, lyrics they pour out of their righteous pen and of course, a look into what makes metal tick. I’ll go into the key elements that makes metal and what doesn’t. It will include a personal look on metal from myself and interviews from today’s top metal musicians and where they believe it is going.

Even though some of us may be young, we’ll all come across more and more metal bands so don’t think that this is the end of it. There are many bands out there that are undiscovered that could be the next big thing. Hard to believe, but you never know. Modern Metal is a collection of my musical ramblings, interpretations of lyrics, album covers, song titles, music videos, posters, who I think is the best, who I think is the worst, who I believe shouldn’t be in metal at all and who I think is on the top of the mountain. Ranging from diverse genres, metal has spanned a many generations and continues to grow indefinitely.

Genres spanning from nu metal, metal-core, death metal, black metal, doom metal, power metal, speed metal, thrash metal and straightforward heavy metal. Instead of going into sub-genres, as there are hundreds if not thousands, we’ll just stick to the main genres in which they’re grouped. Melodic death metal bands will be under both death metal and black metal depending on the genre they are more labeled as to make it easier for me to actually remember what I’m doing.

Everyone knows the beginning, there are hundreds of books out there detailing every concert, every band and every documentary on a particular artist that has made a dent somewhere, but I’ve yet to see anyone write anything about where they think metal is going. Sure, you’ve seen bands talk about the current metal scene and what they think of now compared to then, but when you really compare, is it really different?

You don’t have record deals anymore and bands rely on their fan base for studio time and merchandise sales, so that’s one difference. There’s also the fact that it’s downright impossible to become a world renowned musician if you’re in a metal band and not a self-absorbed, whoring pop musician. Now, that’s not entirely true, you have musicians like Florence Welch and Adele who have flawless singing voices, but they’re not metal, so I digress. Not being in the business of managing and such, I don’t know how that differs from what it was, but I can only imagine. I’ve heard and read tons of articles on how so and so screwed over this person, or that person. The sad fact is this; the music industry is slowly going downhill.

The one thing I enjoy most about that previous statement is this: Musicians who employ the metal don’t wish to be trifled with the nonsense that is the music industry. Musicians who shred up and down the scale know, or will know in the near future, that it is their fan base that raises those campaign bars.